REVIEW TOSHIBA SATELLITE U200-196 NOTEBOOK
Satellite a half. The Satellite U200 is a high-quality and beautiful 12.1 inch subnotebook, which is willing to accompany its user everywhere and convinces through robustness (magnesium case) and its very low weight of only 1.9kg . In oder to increase the data security the notebook is equipped with a shock save hard disk and a fingerprint reader.
CASE
The Toshiba U200′s case seems to be robust and compact. This is because of the simple, nearly brawny design of the case. Despite of the simple and linear forms there are nowhere sharp edges which could have a negative impact on the user-friendly handling.
The chosen colors make the notebook look elegant and high-class. The anthracite color of the magnesium trough is covered by a silver plastic part which surrounds the keyboard in one part. The color of the display’s inner side is nearly the same than those of the base unit. At the out side the display is protected by a steel-gray magnesium part.
The chosen colors seem to fit together well and also the quality of the material is alright. The heavily perforated bottom side can be partly slightly pushed in (especially near the optical drive), however, the flexural rigidity of the base unit as well as of the display convinced us. Although the use of magnesium components is gratifying, one needs to consider that magnesium parts are only surface coated, and therefore the paintwork might outwear after a while. On the contrary, plastic parts are homogeneously colored.
The hinges are like those of some other models reversely attached. This requires a back side without any ports. Still, the battery is placed at the back side and can therefore only be taken out, if the display is closed.
Both hinges seem to be robust and feel wonderful when adjusting the display’s postion – their resistance seems to be nearly perfect. There isn’t any wobbling or see-saw and there aren’t any noises, when moving the display. Furthermore, the U200 has a central transport hook, which keeps the display securely locked without allowing it to wobble.
Besides, we only detected a bellied bulge at the cover of the hard disk at the notebook’s bottom side. This protective part which is called HDD Dome by Toshiba distributes forces acting on it to the edges of the cover and avoids damages of the hard disk in this way. Furthermore, the hard disk has a three-dimensional shock protection. The write-read head is moved off the medium in order to prevent data loss at too heavy shocks.
Most of the interfaces are placed at the left and the right side of the case. At the front side there are only the Firewire port and both audio ports (headset, microphone). Despite the place for interfaces is limited to the left and the right side, Toshiba has tried to place ports which are likely to be used permanently near the back. E.g., the power connector, LAN, 2xUSB as well as the VGA port are near the back on either the left or right side. Only the audio ports could be misplaced, if one wants to connect the notebook to an external sound system.
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